


Like A Hole In The Head

by Trojie



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-29
Updated: 2010-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:38:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Uther owns Albion Records, Arthur is his talent scout, and Merlin is the new bass-player for established pub-circuit band Old Religion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I don't mean to stare, we don't have to breed.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own _Merlin_, nor am I affiliated with the BBC in any way. And I don't play the bass particularly well, either. Betaread by Ineptshieldmaid.

It's hot and sweaty in the club, close, gorgeously claustrophobic, stinking of sweat and smoke and sour alcohol, and the air is wringing wet and heavy with sound. Arthur's shirt sticks to his back, glued there by his own body-heat and the crush of bodies against him. He's hanging onto the barrier for dear life, gleefully, violently, wincing every time someone digs fingernails up under his elbows and still yelling, loving it all.

He gets wrenched off the barrier and backwards into the crowd, tries jumping up, arms windmilling frantically in an effort to keep his balance, but he falls, heavily, against people who heave him back up and away, hands ungentle and uncaring on Arthur's ribs and kidneys and face.

There is a joy in a moshpit that makes you stay in it when your eardums buzz and burn and your flesh bruises and the skin of your face feels hot and stretched by the grin you can't get rid of. Arthur knows that joy. He knows he's supposed to be eyeing potentials for signing, knows his father expects him to turn up the Next Big Thing. And he will, he will, but he's going to do it _his_ way. If they can't make that joy on stage with people screaming and feral below them, they won't sell. And standing by a bar, watching, you'd never work that out.

Arthur flatters himself he knows what he's doing. He looks at people ripping clothes and trampling and screaming god-knows-what from ripped-raw throats and feels contempt, because they let the mood rule them. He tells himself it's camouflage, as well - execs stand back. Fans get stuck in. And he's damned if he'll wear a suit to somewhere this hot.

What he doesn't admit, even to himself, is that he'd be here if it wasn't work, he'd be here if his only reason was to dance and listen and get accidentally beaten up and to pull someone equally pretty and bruised before the end of the night. What he doesn't admit is that he wants it. He wants this to be his world, instead of the record company and the big mahogany desk.

And then the flash of stagelights, amber and hot, catches the eyes of a tall, skinny guy who's standing like a rock at the barrier and staring, not at the band, but at Arthur, and suddenly Arthur forgets all his good intentions. The guy's staring, and Arthur wants to find out why. He doesn't hear the rest of the set, trying to swim against the tide of bodies. By the time he makes the barrier, searching for the owner of the eyes, the encore's done and people are leaving, letting those remaining fight over the tape-covered set-list, and letting Arthur sag suddenly, feeling his bruises all at once, no longer held up and in by sheer pressure.

But the tall guy's gone. Arthur curses.

'Good, weren't they,' says someone behind him. Arthur turns. To his disbelief, the tall guy is behind him. He's just as interesting in normal lighting - the planes of him flat and clean-cut, his eyes maybe blue, maybe brown, dilated all the way open. 'You looked like you were having fun. I'm Merlin, by the way,' He offers a hand.

Arthur shakes it. 'Arthur,' he replies, still studying that face and wondering if he can persuade him - _Merlin_ \- to come home with him. The way the handshake lingers, fingers brushing the insides of wrists, suggests the answer's probably a yes.

'Arthur _Pendragon_, I'm guessing,' Merlin says thoughtfully, looking Arthur up and down. When Arthur raises an eyebrow, he grins. 'You think there was a single person in that pit who didn't know who you are? The only son of this country's most influential record label owner? His talent scout?' Merlin laughs. 'I've had your mugshot imprinted on my brain since the first gig I ever played.'

'Oh?' If Merlin is telling the truth (and strangely, Arthur doesn't even think of not believing him), Arthur's much-loved moshpit anonymity is a lie. That's an uncomfortable thought. But he doesn't care right now, still feeling the buzzing in his ears and the buzzing in his brain, and the air cooling around them. Arthur _badly_ wants to take this somewhere else. 'Listen, do you want to get out of here?'

Merlin grins again, his eyes crinkling up. 'I could be persuaded,' he says off-handedly, moving in a little closer.

Persuasion is how they end up in the bathrooms. Not even very much persuasion, actually, and then Arthur's head is thrown back against a cubicle wall and neither of them are able to say much.

'Can you just-'

'Yeah, I-'

'God-'

'_God_-'

Arthur likes it the way he likes the pit and the noise and the bloody awful bands he's sent out to assess four nights a week - he likes the assault on his senses. The too-much, too-fast, too-hard of it. He buries his hands in Merlin's shirt and wrenches him closer, buries his lips and teeth under Merlin's jaw, wraps one ankle round the back of Merlin's calves. Lets their combined weight push him against the wall, lets his hips snap in push-pull-push-pull metronome motion.

Tonight he'll have this. Tomorrow he'll go and tell his father that the group weren't any good, and that he's still looking, yes, honestly. But right now ...

Merlin slides to his knees, looks up wickedly as he starts to open Arthur's fly. Arthur's eyes roll back into his skull of their own accord, last thoughts sliding across his mind, desperate to get themselves across before the brain shut up shop.

_You think there was a single person in that moshpit who didn't know who you are?'_ Arthur's eyes flicker open again.

_... since the first gig I played ... _

'Nnngh,' he says incoherently, pushing away. Merlin's head comes back up. His eyes are dark and stupid with want, his mouth red and wet.

'Wha'?'

'Stop,' breathes Arthur, struggling to get himself back under control. 'Stop,' he says a minute later, sharper. Merlin gets up slowly, a wreck and a mess and completely uncomprehending.

'What is it, Arthur-'

'You- this ... You just want a contract.' Arthur tries to do up his pants like he isn't still actually kind of gagging for it, tries to salvage some of his dignity. His fingers turn to wood, his body decides it isn't having a bar of it, actually. But Arthur doesn't do groupies or wannabes or producer's-couch-artists, can't do that to the company. Can't do it to himself.

It kinda hurts, more than it should for a bathroom hook-up.

'Excuse me?'

'Nice try.' Arthur lets out a derisive bark of laughter. 'The innocent act is brilliant. But let me guess, you're playing this compost-heap of a bar tomorrow, and you'd really like it if I stopped by?' He can't help the tone of it, can't help twisting the knife a little, tit-for-tat, pain for pain. No doubt Merlin'd thought they could both be happy with this kind of ... arrangement.

But Arthur doesn't do that.

'Excuse me?' Merlin says again. He looks shocked. 'You think I hung around after a gig, when I could be with my mates, to hit you up about that? You think I'd - You think that's what I was- ' He can't even finish the sentence, he's gone a deep wine-red colour.

'I don't think, I know,' Arthur retorts. 'Sorry mate, but I'm on a tight schedule.' Arthur gives a little wave, and heads for the door.

'Oh, I'm so _sorry_. My apologies, your Majesty, I'm sure,' Merlin calls after him, his voice echoing on the bathroom tiles.

Arthur goes home and gets out all his frustrations in the shower with Mudhoney blasting on the stereo through the water-noise. It's not what he wants to listen to - _no-one likes to be told they're a creep, they're a jerk_ \- but he doesn't know what it _is_ he wants. He goes to bed with his iPod on shuffle; falls asleep to PJ Harvey saying dreamy dreamy music make it be alright and wakes up to the Who telling him don't cry, it's only teenage wasteland.

Ain't that the truth.


	2. No need to work this out now, cos you know there's no reason why.

It took some wasted internet time and eventually a lot of very carefully phrased questions to the researchers to find out something Arthur could have known if he'd been a bit less hasty in leaving that bathroom, but he did find out. Merlin's band. They call themselves 'Old Religion', like some hippie-punk joke, and apparently they even used to do 'Infected' as an encore. Merlin's stupid razorblade of a face stares out at him from a poster, along with that of a frankly consumptive-looking woman in a red dress and a scarily reptilian guy with no shirt on.

They're playing Indigo on Thursday, it turns out. Arthur can't stop thinking about it.

He just can't _stop_, can't stop thinking and planning, wondering, clicking on MySpace page after MySpace page hoping to find them, leg jiggling under the table. Can't stop lying awake in bed, tossing and turning and wondering why in Hell's name he said stop _then_, letting his own hands wander and pretending they're Merlin's.

When Thursday rolls around, Arthur gets himself absolutely shredded on the barrier, willing Merlin to look down and see him, but all that happens is he gets flash after flash of golden stage light gleaming on Merlin's hair and Merlin's eyes, lighting a stripe along Merlin's profile.

He doesn't hear them. His father wants to know what the hell is the matter with him. He goes home and showers, pressing fingers into bruises that mark arpeggios along his ribs, wondering what the tune is, wondering why he feels played by something bigger than himself.

They play Morrison's on Saturday, and Arthur meant to go to some other bar and listen to some other, _any_ other band, but he can't. In order to try and claw back some kind of professionalism, Arthur tries so hard, ends up signing the openers up for a meeting with his father, stands back at the bar with a glass of Coke and endures the reflected heat of the floor without being in it. But the only band member who catches his eyes is the drummer, weird guy tattooed with scales, and he smirks all the way across the room at Arthur while the woman's red Telecaster whines and she wails about how _that is not my destiny_ and Merlin chants 'two sides, two sides' into his microphone, fingers walking, walking constantly up and down the frets of his bass.

***

'Nice suit.'

It's the first thing Merlin's said to him in two months, despite the fact that Arthur knows Merlin knows he's been chasing them up and down the coast on their little pub tour, despite the fact that Arthur's gone to the stage door three times and been met with nothing but hurt and heated glances. Eventually Arthur had to come to the conclusion that actually, what Merlin had wanted from him that night wasn't his fountain pen.

Eventually he had to come to the conclusion that maybe he'd been kind of stupid.

But Merlin wouldn't talk to him and he wasn't going to just blurt out an apology apropos of nothing. He might be kind of stupid but he's got his pride, dammit.

And now he's standing in front of a guy he still, badly, wants to take to bed, for absolutely no reason he can think of except that he can't stop thinking of him, he's like that tune you can't get out of your head, some sweet little riff Arthur wants to play til his fingers bleed, and he's about to offer him something he said he never would. Arthur feels like a fraud and a liar, because he's not here because he wants to be. Or rather, this isn't why he wants to be here. He's here, officially, because his father found out about Old Religion's underground popularity. He wants them, without bothering to learn anything about them except their name and their crowd-capacity. And Arthur's been sent to get them.

_'Looks like that little outfit you've been stalking has some potential,' Uther said with an approving smile for Arthur's apparent talent for sniffing out talent, which Arthur is not going to tell him has been apparently shoved in a cupboard for the past two months whilst his addiction to their bass-player took over all its space. 'You can tell them I'll see them Wednesday afternoon,' Uther goes on to say. 'Standard deal, alright?'_

He comes back to the present and realises he should probably respond to Merlin. After all, it was technically a compliment, despite the tone.

'Thanks,' Arthur replies, a little offhandedly, stroking a lapel as provocatively as he knows how. 'They make me dress up for special occasions.'

'Why, is it your birthday?' Merlin asks sardonically. Out of the corner of his eye Arthur can see Typhoid Mary and Reptile Boy, as he privately calls them, approaching. He deems it good timing.

'No,' he says, even more offhandedly. 'But it's yours.'

Merlin squints at him, puzzled.

'What's _he_ doing here?' asks Typhoid Mary, sounding less than best-pleased, as she draws near.

'Nim, this is-' Merlin starts, gesturing towards Arthur.

'Arthur Pendragon,' says Arthur, cutting in and handing the drummer his card. 'I'm with Albion-'

'I know who you're with,' says Nim. Close up she's older than he would have thought from seeing her on stage. Her hair is still dark and her skin pale, but there are creases at her eyes and the corners of her mouth. 'I want to know why you're here. Does your father know?'

This is getting weird. 'Actually, yes, he does.' Arthur tries again. 'He's sent me to ask you-'

'Tell him no,' Nim says, crossing her arms.

'- if you'd be interested in meeting -'

'The answer is no.'

Arthur ploughs on '- potentially lucrative -'

'Tell Uther Pendragon he can keep his stinking money,' she hisses, and turns on her heel. 'He should have learnt years ago he can't buy me.'

The dresssing room echoes to the sound of her heels striking the floor as she leaves. Merlin looks a little stunned - Arthur is fairly sure his own face is making a similar expression. Lizard Boy is laughing at both of them.

'What was _that_ all about?' Arthur asks eventually. Merlin shakes his head and shrugs.

'She always walks away. She's been doing it for years,' Scaly says. 'She walked away from Uther too,' he adds.

'Excuse me?'

'He doesn't know what he asked you for, and you shouldn't give it to him anyway,' is the drummer's parting shot as he follows Nim out of the dressing room door, leaving Merlin and Arthur alone. Alone, all alone.

Oh, this is such a bad, bad idea, because Arthur is rapidly learning what it means to have no self-control.

'Before you ask, no, I have no idea what freaky shit Drake is on,' Merlin says in a rush. 'He's always been like that, as far as I can find out.'

'And that ... stuff about Nim and my father?'

'Also no idea,' says Merlin, shaking his head. 'I only joined the band six months ago.' He laughs a bit bitterly. 'Yep, living the dream alright.'

Arthur swears he can smell the stage-noise rising off Merlin's skin in the tight space. He wishes he wasn't in the suit. Merlin starts to potter around the dressing room, which is doubling as storage, apparently either deciding to ignore Arthur's presence or comfortable with it.

Arthur wishes it were the latter, suspects the former. Merlin is coiling straps and leads, putting things methodically into gigbag pockets and slotting pedals into the open backs of amplifiers - Nim appears to be the veritable High Priestess of effects; Arthur briefly notes phase, chorus and the obligatory Big Muff and DS2 as well as a couple he can't name before they're stacked away and Merlin turns his attention to what Arthur assumes is his own gear.

'I'm sorry, was there something else you wanted?' the bass player asks. Arthur blinks and tries to pretend he wasn't staring.

'What?'

Merlin finishes zipping the gigbag shut around his bass and gets up, slowly. He comes over to Arthur, licking his lips nervously. 'I said, was there something else you ... wanted?' he asks, and he's close. He's so, so close. Arthur can see the way his hair falls into spikes and waves where his sweat has damped it, can see the worried-red place on his lip where he was biting it during the set, the crease on his shirt where the bass-strap hung. He can see the gig all over Merlin, the gig he didn't get to enjoy, not properly. He wants it now, wants to throw himself into it, into Merlin's space, into Merlin. Arthur's breath catches in his throat, his hand catches on Merlin's hip where he didn't even know he'd put it.

Merlin swallows. Hard.

'So, now that you know I'm not after you for your signature,' he starts, and Arthur kisses him. Merlin startles, a tiny noise escaping him, then relaxes into it.

Before he knows it Arthur finds himself against the wall again, with Merlin's hands in dark and secret places. Neither of them hears the click of heels like talons on the stained brown lino - the sound of breathing fuzzing too loud like feedback in their ears.

'Merlin, come on, we've got to get this stuff out of here by-' There's an angry shriek, and the next thing Arthur knows, he's trying to bolt out of a pub with his fly at half-mast and an impressive red patch that's going to bruise for sure high on his cheekbone.

***

He doesn't remember getting home, but within the space of three hours he gets two phone calls. The first wakes him up from peaceful if slightly uncomfortable slumber on the couch, which is where he'd fallen after getting home. The side of his face hurts like he's been kicked by a mule.

'I'm tearing up your card,' says a woman's voice. 'Just so you know. We're not going to be bought by Pendragon's weanling son.'

It's too early in the morning for words like weanling, which Arthur isn't even sure is a word. 'Nim?' he asks groggily.

'That's Nimueh to you,' she snaps. 'I've been in this business longer than you've been on the planet, and don't you forget it.'

'I wouldn't dream of-'

'And leave him alone,' she says. 'He's not for you. He's too good for you. Touch him again and I'll kill you.'

She hangs up. Arthur mutters something incoherent and decides the bedroom is too far away, but at least this time he can take his shoes off before curling up again. He's halfway through doing that when the phone rings again.

'Hello?' He manages a proper greeting this time, thank God.

'Every good boy deserves favours.'

'Pardon?'

'He needs someone to listen, or what does he play for?'

'Who is this-'

'Indigo. Next Thursday,' the voice says, suddenly sharp. 'Oh, and. Don't wear a suit.'

'... Drake?' Arthur tries, groggily.

'Don't let us lose the best bass-player we've ever had. Ignore Nim. Save this number, you're going to want it.'

'I'm sorry, is this Drake?'

There's a brief pause and the sound of a cellphone changing hands, and some swearing, and then Merlin comes on the line.

'I'm sorry,' he says tiredly. 'Whatever they've been saying, I'm sorry. I've been trying to get them to stop drinking for hours.'

'Merlin?'

'Arthur?' There's a gusty sigh. 'Oh fuck.'

'Hello to you too.'

'That's not exactly how I meant it.'

'How did you mean it?'

'I meant - this is a bad idea. I'm going to hang up now.'

'No, wait!-

Click.

Arthur saves the number, just in case, and then turns the phone off. He never does make it as far as taking off his other shoe, let alone leaving the couch.

***

'And will I be seeing Old Religion at three o'clock on Wednesday?' Uther asks at his most jovial when Arthur hauls himself into the office the next morning, not caring about the stunning purple bruise on his cheekbone or the fact that he definitely looks like he slept on the couch.

'No,' Arthur says distractedly, putting his briefcase down and foraging for his coffee mug underneath the paperwork on his desk.

'No?' Uther says. His tone says 'I am waiting for an explanation of why the world is not as I had expected,' and that it had better be a good explanation.

'No.' Arthur runs his hands through his hair. 'Do you know a woman called Nimueh?' he asks. 'Sings, plays a red Tele?'

Arthur looks up when his father says nothing; Uther's scowling. 'Why?' he asks, all hint of joviality gone.

'She's lead and vocals for Old Religion,' Arthur says. 'She turned me down last night, said you ought to know you can't buy her, or something.' He shrugs, looks to Uther for an answer, but gets none. The older man strides into his own office and slams the door. Behind the strips of frosted glass Arthur can see him pick up his phone.


	3. Now my better hands cradle broken glass, of what was everything

Arthur doesn't immediately twig, to his shame, but Old Religion go from a poster on every power-pole to complete non-event within a month. He's still doing the rounds, still listening to everything that comes his way, and he still searches out their gigs and gets himself laminated to the dancefloor deliberately, eyes welded to Merlin's fingers on the fretboard and ignoring Nim's poisonous glares, but gradually, gradually, there are less and less Old Religion gigs and more and more other gigs, until one day Arthur checks the week's list that the researchers have put together for him, and they're not featured. Anywhere.

He asks Indigo's bar manager, Geoffrey, about it as off-handedly as he can one night, and the old man laughs. 'Your dad blacklisted them, didn't he. S'funny, I thought he'd do it long before now if he was going to. S'been a while since Nim was doing the rounds, though, so I thought maybe he was over it.'

'What _are_ you talking about?' Arthur asks, bewildered. He knows his dad has sway with most of the bar managers in town, but ...

'Thought your dad would have told you,' Geoffrey says conspiratorially, under the noise of the bar. 'But then again, maybe not,' he adds. 'Always was a jealous man, your dad.'

'Excuse me?' Arthur is getting sick of people being vague at him. He plunks his glass down. 'Geoffrey,' he says, looking the older man straight in the eye. 'I know you and Father have been friendly for years. Please tell me what the hell is going on.'

Geoffrey rolls his eyes. 'Just as much charm as your father and all,' he sighs. 'Alright. Fine.' He takes a breath and beckons Arthur closer, close enough that Arthur can smell the hint of whiskey on his breath. 'I don't know much, you understand. And it was before you came along, as well. But what I heard was, she was jealous.'

'Of Father?'

'That's right. She was one of the first artists he managed, and she had this girl singing with her at the time, Ygraine-'

Arthur blinks. Before he can comment, Geoffrey grins at him. 'Yep. Well, Uther married her, didn't he.'

'And that's _it_?'

'Ah, well, see, I think Ygraine was a bit more than just Nim's backing vocalist at the time ...'

Arthur stands up straight abruptly. 'That's my mother you're talking about,' he points out as calmly as he feels able to. 'Thanks,' he adds, not wanting to seem ungrateful, but there are things he doesn't need to hear.

'Gaius would know more, of course,' Geoffrey says, propping his fists on his hips. 'If he'll talk to you, that is.'

'Thanks,' says Arthur again, and leaves.

He never asked how his mother and father met. He never asks about his mother at all, actually, because he doesn't want his father to get that far-away look in his eye. Arthur wanders down the steps and out into the street. _Mother was a singer_ is new. Father knowing Nim is new. Not that Uther ever really tells Arthur anything, especially about the past, or his personal life, but ...

There's a scuffling noise from the left-hand turn he passes, but he's not paying attention. He's trying to work this through. Would his father really ruin someone's career out of competitiveness? Would he be that shortsighted, that vicious? Arthur shoves his hands in his pockets, still thinking.

It's that, his own brand of short-sightedness, that lets them jump him in the alley, and he doesn't even get a chance to retaliate, they're so determined - just manages to curl himself into a ball, tries to protect his head and prays, _prays_ it's just fists and boots.

He doesn't know how long he lies there, floating in and out of consciousness and counting his heartbeats in a vain effort to make them behave. They go faster and slower with no rhythm at all, one two three four one two _three_ four one two three one two THREE ONE TWO ONE TWO-

'_Arthur_? What are you - _shit_-' and then someone, Arthur is vaguely aware, is kneeling by his head and there's two fingers on his neck, all rough and calloused, it makes him want to squirm.

'-yes, an ambulance, please, uh, not sure. The alley beside Indigo Bar in central town, yeah, um, no, I'll stay here. He's been beaten up, I think, I dunno, I just got here and found him - yes, please. Thanks. Bye. Thanks.'

The _flwap_ of a phone closing, and then there are two hands scratchy-gentle on him, trying to get him on his side. Arthur feels like he should cooperate but his strings are all cut.

'Come on, you bastard, you're not going to choke on your own broken nose,' mutters the person wrestling with Arthur's uncooperative body. 'Not if I have anything to do with it.'

Every time Arthur tries to sleep, he's patted and tapped and prodded and poked and provoked with comments and questions that he answers lazily, not quite sure what angle his logic is on but just talking, because it seems to keep whoever it is happy. 'You've got a concussion,' they keep saying. 'Arthur, you have to keep talking to me, you're concussed.'

'S'okay,' Arthur says. 'I know what t'do. Jus' gotta stay 'wake,' he adds, and yawns.

'Yes, Arthur, stay awake, please, come on.'

'Y'are 'wake,' Arthur points out. 'Don' worry, y'not gonna die, cos y're'wake. S'okay.' He tries to pat their hand sympathetically, but things aren't quite where he thought they were.

'No, _you_ have to stay awake,' says Person, but then everything is white, white light and whining Dopplered noises, and he's up, down, clattering on some metal bed thing, and there are soft-coarse hands on his scalp, and he's allowed to fall blessedly, finally, asleep.

***

'-and I'm saying this is unacceptable! Let me see my son!'

'Father?' Arthur asks groggily. He lets his eyes peel open to blinding fluorescent lights. Blinking feels slow and heavy.

'Arthur?'

The reason he can hear his father so close is that he's in the corridor on a hospital bed. There are lots of people on beds, he can see them lining the walls.

Uther works his way past the nurse to Arthur's side. 'I tried to tell them to put you in a proper ward but they say they're full,' he says disgustedly. 'However they also said I could take you home today.'

'Do you know what happened?' Arthur asks, coming more and more awake every moment. 'Do you know who got me here?'

'I was hoping you could tell me,' Uther admits. 'The young man that called the ambulance stayed with you until they got you into bed, they tell me, and then left. He gave his name as Merlin Emrys. Do you know him?'

'... Sort of,' Arthur admits. 'But what happened? Was I mugged? Where's my stuff?' He pats himself vaguely before realising he's in a hospital gown and his clothes are nowhere to be seen.

'They don't appear to have taken anything, no.'

'You said something about home?' Arthur says. He wants nothing more than his own bed, and maybe a couple of paracetamol.

'I thought I'd take you back to mine. The nurse says you'll be groggy for the rest of the day, and sore for awhile after that.'

Arthur would argue, but he can't disagree with the groggy, or the sore, or his father's worried, adamant expression. So he gingerly gets up and manages to manhandle himself back into his clothes (they stink of sweat and dirt) in the privacy of the toilets, and lets Uther walk him to the car. He sinks gratefully into the Jag's leather seat and dozes all the way back to the Pendragon estate, an hour's drive from the city.

'This came for you while you were away, sir,' says Gaius, Uther's PA, as they get out of the car. Not the most chipper of men any day, he looks worried now. He hands Uther a slimline CD case.

'I'm not in the mood for demos right now,' Uther says, waving it away.

'I don't think it's a demo, sir.' Gaius says, with some trepidation. Uther takes another look, both at the case and at Gaius's worried face. They've worked together a long time - Arthur supposes if Uther would take anyone's word for it, he would take Gaius's. And this time apparently he does - he grits his teeth and snatches the CD case. Gaius hovers behind Arthur as he trails his father up the steps and into the house. The disc goes into the Bang and Olufson. They listen in cold silence as chords crash around them, and they listen to the end of the single track, but Arthur knows it from the beginning. From the look on his face, so does Uther.

It's funny, but Arthur's first reaction is 'God, what an awful pun.'

_I'm sorry about the sun-_

'Call the police,' Uther says, gritting his teeth. Gaius bows his way out of the room, presumably to do as Uther's asked. Father and son stay and listen.

_-but until then, better off dead  
A smile on the lips and a hole in the head  
Better off dead, yeah, better than this-_

Gaius comes back in with the phone, hands it to Uther wordlessly, and pulls Arthur away.

'Come on, you need your rest,' he says. What he means is, come on, we need to leave your father alone.

And so Arthur lets himself be put to bed in a room he hasn't slept in for five years, and he's tired enough and sore enough that he doesn't care. He just wants to sleep.


	4. Yeah, all those stars drip down like butter

'I'm putting Lancelot on your rounds,' Uther says at dinner. 'You need time to rest,'

'Fair enough,' Arthur says, spooning up the soup that is all he can manage. His face has swollen up and gone an interesting mottled colour - clearly he hadn't managed to protect his head as much as he'd thought - and his jaw hurts. Most of him hurts, actually, particularly the rib area. 'I should just need a week or so,' he adds.

'I was thinking a bit longer than that.'

'What? Why?'

Uther looks aside, then fixes Arthur with a gimlet eye, and sighs. 'It's not safe,' he says. 'It seems that certain people are unwilling to keep their grievances with me between us. I'm sorry you've been dragged into this, Arthur.'

'You think the attack was deliberate,' Arthur says, putting his spoon neatly back into the bowl. The clink of metal on china sounds unnaturally loud.

Uther nods.

'And that disc - I _thought_ it was an awful joke.' Arthur is starting to see it now. ''I'm sorry about the sun'...' He stops, and frowns.

'Yes, yes, there's no need for the Sherlock Holmes impression,' Uther snaps. 'Bad Religion, Old Religion. I suppose you know about the blacklisting.'

'I heard,' Arthur admitted. 'But why? They're not the first band to turn us down.'

'You know, I still hear regularly from Geoffrey at Indigo,' Uther says blandly. 'He called me just last night, actually. He sends his best wishes for your speedy recovery.' Fast as a whiplash his tone changes. 'He also told me you'd been asking questions.'

'I'm a grown man, Father,' Arthur says. 'And there's no harm in asking questions.'

'Those kinds of questions you can ask me, if you really feel the need to know,' Uther says.

'Would I get a real answer?' asks Arthur. His irritation is building - first he's not allowed to do the only part of his job he enjoys, then he's not allowed to ask questions - Uther plainly just wants him to sit down, shut up, and do what he's told. But Uther's approach is the reason Arthur's face is puffed up like a marshmallow. Arthur feels he's due a bit of an explanation.

'You'd be told what I think is right for you to know,' Uther says, his mouth tightly drawn down at the corners. 'And I think you've had far too much gossip off Geoffrey-'

'_I_ think I've got a right to know about my own mother,' Arthur says in a rush. His fingers are gripping the edge of the table so hard they hurt, which is something his late-night date in the alleyway hadn't already managed.

'Don't you dare,' Uther growls. 'Don't push me, boy. There are things you've no right to ask of me.'

'But you've the right to run around having some stupid little _feud_ with some psychopath whose girlfriend you stole years ago, and get me beaten-up in the process, I suppose!'

Uther's face is stony. He's breathing hard and his grip on his cutlery has turned his knuckles white. 'Get out,' he says.

Arthur doesn't need telling twice. He shoves away from the table and heads straight for the front door, fumbling his cellphone out of the tangle of iPod and earbuds in his pocket to call a taxi.

Gaius would clearly like to say something, as he holds the door open for Arthur, but he's holding his tongue, something Arthur imagines he's had to do a lot over the years working for Uther.

The back of the taxi, when it turns up, is dark and cool, and Arthur would like to hide in it forever. He ignores three phonecalls that come in from his father's landline. He deletes the texts that come in, as well, until one comes in labelled FROM: MERLIN.

_playin 2nite @ house party 153 Severn St 9pm. he found out wat nim did 2 u. he tried 2 leave n she sed she wudnt let him. u need 2 get him out. ill distract nim. drake ps dnt txt bak_

'Change of plans,' Arthur says on the spur of the moment, and gives the driver the address of the party instead of Arthur's flat. He starts to feel a twist of anticipation curl in his gut. He knows he looks frightful, that he's wearing a suit that's three days old and looks it, that he's just out of hospital yesterday with orders to mind his bruised ribs, but ...

Yeah. But. But nothing. But everything. But he hurts and he wants to hurt more, but he burns and he wants to burn more, but he wants to lash out and fight and dance and fuck and hurl abuse. He wants to sweat instead of bleed, and he wants to ...

He wants to feel this. He wants to not be his father. He wants to do this his way.

***

It's mad. It's a mad gig, in a huge house, a mansion really - it's someone's twenty-first, and it's stupidly easy to just walk in off the street. Arthur gets tinnitus pretty much as soon as he gets in the door into Nim screaming 'counting out aggression, turn into obsession-', and he gets an elbow to his already supremely sore sternum the next moment, and he gets the beginning of a raging hard-on the second he sees Merlin put his bass aside just long enough to dump the contents of a waterbottle over his own head before playing the next song dripping wet.

Drake spots him immediately, of course, and nods. Arthur can't help but wonder what the hell the drummer's agenda is, but he steers Nim away as soon as they finish and towards a keg, leaving Merlin and some people who have the air of hired help to start hauling gear off the makeshift stage. Arthur just watches for a minute, as the DJ who's supposed to take this party through to the small hours starts up out in the garden and the crowd follows him.

Eventually, once all the drums have been cased up and carted away along with the amplifiers, the hired help buggers off. Merlin, who's been slowly and methodically packing away effects pedals and guitars, finally slings one gigbag over his back and picks the other up, heading in the same direction that the helpers had come and gone from earlier.

Arthur follows him. Merlin's humming, nodding his head gently, and he follows one long corridor further and further from the noise in the front garden to a little room at the back of the house, stacked with the rest of Old Religion's gear. He doesn't notice Arthur until he steps into the room.

Merlin almost drops the gigbag he's holding. He scrambles to catch it, puts it and the one over his shoulder down, and then shoves the door shut as fast as he can. It's clearly a disused bedroom, and there's one of those silly turn-the-wooden-knob type of latches on the door. Merlin turns it.

'God, what did she _do_ to you?' he whispers. He reaches for Arthur's face like he can't stop himself, runs his fingers over Arthur's cheek, his chin, his puffy lower lip. Arthur shudders, his eyes flicker closed. Merlin's touch is cool and scratchy - string-callouses, of course - 'Arthur, I'm sorry, I didn't know she-'

'Shut up,' Arthur says, and closes his hand over Merlin's wrist, dragging that hand with its stupid spindly fingers down to his hip, and then he's free to put his own fingers in Merlin's hair, and draw him close, breathe him in, all sweat and beer and string-metal tang in smudges where he's wiped his brow, and then he's free to angle his face to Merlin's and kiss him, his lips feeling alien and not-quite his own so swollen and sore, but it's worth it when Merlin's eyes shut and his mouth opens and he licks along Arthur's lips. Both his hands are on Arthur's hips now and they clutch convulsively, possessively.

'You called the ambulance,' Arthur breathes as he slides his hands under Merlin's damp shirt.

'I'm not in the habit of leaving people bleeding in alleyways,' Merlin retorts, giving up on Arthur's shirt buttons and leaving the thing half-undone and going for the fly instead. 'Even if they are enormous prats.'

'I won't let her hurt you,' Arthur says. He shoves Merlin's hands aside and wrenches Merlin's own fly open, blessing the man who invented zips and _this_ man who evidently wears his jeans until they fall off him for the fact that once the button's undone a one-handed yank at the corner of the fabric has the whole thing coming loose, falling off.

'This is stupid,' Merlin mutters. 'The hell are we doing?'

'Don't tell me you don't want it.'

'Doesn't make it not stupid,' Merlin hisses. Arthur grins into his neck, and bites.

They both reach down and in blindly and end up tangling their fingers and swearing and colliding as they try to take care of everything, and okay so maybe this whole thing could be a bit more graceful but Arthur was never into Merlin for grace anyway and it's kind of perfect shoving him onto a Mode Four and rutting senselessly until Merlin's eyes roll up into the back of his head and suddenly Arthur's suit is a lot more of a mess than it was even five minutes ago. Two feet away, a rhythmic rustling noise tells Arthur that that particular box contains a snare drum and it's _resonating to them shagging_ and that's such a stupid thing to be thinking about that Arthur sniggers and is taken completely unawares by Merlin shoving his other hand down into the tight, hot space they've made between them and helping matters along.

Arthur's hardly done making a mess of his own trousers when there's a sharp knock at the door and 'she's coming, get out' in Drake's voice.

Merlin's eyes go round as saucers, he fumbles to do up two pairs of trousers at once before Arthur shoves him away and does his own. 'The window,' he mouths, wincing as he does so and realising that falling into a flowerbed, with all his bruises, is going to be a _bitch_ but he doesn't really have another option right now.

Merlin grabs his gigbag. Arthur's about to tell him to forget it, but the look in the other guy's eyes tells him that's an argument he'll never win.

The click of heels on lino becomes audible, gets louder. Merlin gives Arthur a knee up out of the window so fast that he can't help but groan as he hits the dirt outside. He barely has time to roll out of the way before a gigbag drops beside him, followed by Merlin himself. One quick bash with Arthur's fist and the window's closed, and will probably never be the same again, and then they run.

Or rather, Merlin runs, gets ten metres, looks back at Arthur limping along at speed, sighs, and comes back for him.

'Let go of him,' says a very familiar voice, very angrily. Arthur looks up into blinding torchlight and winces. Merlin grabs at him, hauling Arthur's arm over his shoulder and straightening up.

'No!' he says defiantly.

'I warn you boy, the police are here with me and they will have quite a lot of searching questions to ask you about why you're here with my son, who is just out of his hospital bed,' says Uther, stepping into view.

'He's here because I came to see him,' Arthur calls out. 'For God's sake, Father, I thought you'd made it quite clear you wanted me gone.'

'Don't be stupid,' Uther retorts. 'When you didn't return my calls I thought something had happened to you, you little fool. When I called the taxi company the driver said he'd dropped you off here, one of Nimueh's friend's houses. And now I find you in the company of one of her toughs!'

Arthur has to laugh at that description of Merlin. Someone steps forward to try and pacify Uther - a police officer. 'Alright son,' he says evenly to Arthur. 'No-one's gonna do anything sudden, but we'd just like you and your friend to come with us for a bit. Just to make sure you're safe, ask you a few questions-'

That voice is the injection of reality that Arthur's body needed to stem the flood of adrenaline and point out that he's really _sore_ and still really tired and wouldn't it be nice to sit down? Which he does, heavily. He's shivering, even though he tries to stop. Merlin is yanked down undignifiedly. He blinks owlishly at Arthur in the torchlight, shifting his gigbag out from under his leg.

'Sorry,' Arthur mutters. Merlin rolls his eyes and smiles, and runs his fingers through Arthur's hair briefly. 'We're okay!' he says, because three figures have started towards them in a panic. 'I think Arthur might need a chair sometime soon though.'

And just when it starts getting almost sensible, there's a shriek like the unholy offspring of a pterodactyl and a banshee and then Nim is all over them, breathing hard and beer-sour in Arthur's face. He pulls back, tries to fend her off, and she rears up to bring an arm into play, there's something in her hand - and suddenly Merlin lurches in front of Arthur, shoves Arthur back and tries to bat at Nim.

She brings her hand down, hard and vicious. Arthur realises too late that there's a knife, she's got a knife -

\- Merlin's gone white, dead white, there's wetness where there shouldn't be -

'Stop!' someone's shouting in the distance, and Nim's eyes are crazy and wild in the harsh beams of the torches. She throws herself at the light, past it, at Uther behind it, but Arthur doesn't see much more - Merlin is gasping damp and dry like a fish out of water, Arthur raises hands to see them all smeared with blood, it looks blackish-green in what little light there is but he knows it's blood.

'Cellphone ... you idiot,' Merlin manages to whimper when all Arthur can do is stare at him and at his hands. 'Call ... a fucking ... ambulance,' and then he's hacking and coughing - shit, Arthur doesn't even know where he's cut. That thought galvanises him back into action. He fumbles Merlin's phone from his pocket and thumbs it open, dialling emergency services, feeling a little stupid because there's already two policemen here-

'Ambulance please, ambulance, my friend's been stabbed, he's bleeding- Severn Street, um-

'153,' Merlin wheezes.

'-number 153, there's two policemen here already but- we're round the back, there's a party on but we're in the garden- oh thank God, thank you.'

He drops the phone. There's shouting over where the others were - the torches have been dropped, their beams illuminating nothing more than a draincover and a catflap now, they're a lot closer to the back door than Arthur thought - but most of the shouting is male. Arthur hopes to God that means they've caught her, that his father is okay.

He doesn't realise he was saying it out loud until Merlin grunts and grabs one of Arthur's hands, pressing it to his ribs urgently and firmly. 'Hold here,' he says, grunting. 'Gotta ... keep pressure ...'

'You killed her!' a shriek comes from the darkness. 'You bastard, you _bastard_, you never-' Nimueh stumbles back into the light, the torchbeam casting her shadow huge and twisted against the house's wall. Uther stumbles with her, her fists held in his hands as he tries to keep her from striking him. Thank God, she seems to have lost the knife.

'Liar,' Uther hisses. Their silhouettes together are grotesque, writhing things as she struggles and he holds her back. 'I loved her, I _loved her_ and you could never accept it, never accept her decision-' The two policemen are trying to separate them but neither of them seems to realise it.

Sirens wail and the whole tableau freezes - the only thing moving is Merlin's blood pulsing through Arthur's fingers. That breaks the spell, brings him back to the moment again, like he keeps drifting off.

'It's okay,' Arthur whispers. 'It's okay, the ambulance is here, it's okay.' He keeps saying it, over and over, and he doesn't know who he's trying to convince as handcuffs and gurneys and stethoscopes and things start coming out and being put to their proper uses by people who know what they're doing, nice, competent, uninvolved people

He rides in the back of the ambulance with Merlin, watching out through the panes of glass in the doors as Uther and Nimueh are pushed into police cars, getting smaller and smaller as the ambulance pulls away. It's like he was watching a movie and now it's turned off - there was a story there, but he wasn't in it. He clutches Merlin's gigbag like a teddybear, one-armed, and keeps the other on Merlin's head, thumbing through his hair in a way he hopes is soothing, all the way to the hospital.

Merlin has a gash along his ribs, and he's lost a lot of blood, but he's going to be okay. Careful people in clean clothes told Arthur so. He's allowed to sit next to Merlin's bed, and he washes his hands in the hospital bathroom and carefully, reverently unzips the gigbag and plays Merlin's bass amateurishly along with whatever turns up on his iPod. He listens to the music with one ear, lets the other earbud dangle, and just noodles away, plunk-plunk-plunk, the strings thudding and resonating through the body of the thing but church-quiet without an amplifier, while he waits for Merlin to come round.

When he does, he stares at Arthur holding his bass for a long, long moment. His eyelashes are unfairly long, and they've clumped together at the corner of his left eye. Arthur has to resist the urge to wipe at them.

'Hey,' Merlin says hoarsely.

'Hey,' Arthur replies. In his right ear, Eddie Vedder is singing _this I will recall, every time I fall_. Merlin smiles at him, pale and trusting, and gropes for the other earbud. Arthur shuffles his chair closer, lying the bass down on the bed next to Merlin and resting his head on the edge of Merlin's pillow.

For once in Arthur's life, it feels good to rest.


	5. Know that I'm gonna be your dangerous side-effect.

Nimueh ends up going to court, and then to prison. Which is comforting, because it's nice to know that when people stick knives in other people, there are _consequences_. No-one knows where Drake is, even though it's got to be hard to hide when you're a six-foot tall freakshow with scale tattoos and a conversational style that rivals Yoda for incomprehensibility and creative grammar.

Uther and Arthur both go back to work, except Arthur switches desks with Lancelot so that he can be on the far side of the room from Uther's door, and makes sure to get in before Uther and leave after him. He refuses point-blank to give up his scouting rounds, with the result that Uther starts sending Lancelot out as well. Well done, Dad. Nice work on the trust issue.

Arthur takes that one back, though, because he sucks on the trust issue too and he really doesn't think it's a bad thing. Why would he want to trust Uther? As for getting Lance to go to gigs, that makes sense, because Arthur knows his mind's not on the job.

Merlin drifts around the usual bar circuit, filling in on bass for other bands, and he's hard to catch like that, but Arthur manages it. He hasn't worn a suit to a single bar, hasn't worn a suit at all, since that night at the house party, and he hasn't talked to a single band either. Instead he starts giving as good as he gets on the dancefloor and the moshpit, and he starts fighting for setlists and picks.

It feels good to be a fan at last, and Merlin's grin from the stage each night Arthur finds him is promising. He puts his bass down mid-set one night, a few months after the house-party, and drenches himself in the contents of his water glass, the bastard, staring straight at Arthur and licking his lips, and that night Arthur decides he'll be a groupie for once.

Merlin beats him to it, meets him by the bar, and Arthur can't decide if it's the gigbag over the shoulder, or the wet hair, or the Black Flag shirt, or the _stare_ that's the sexy part. The bit where he's practically dragged to the door doesn't hurt either, he decides.

Arthur finally manages to take Merlin home that night. They muck around in the kitchen while Arthur tries to make tea, Merlin's fingers interfering with his concentration via his belt buckle. They muck around in the living room while Arthur attempts to put on a CD and Merlin disagrees with all his choices. They finally compromise on the first disc of _Mellon Collie_, of all things, and Arthur drops onto the couch with a happy sigh. Merlin raises an eyebrow.

'Let me guess,' he says. 'The sweet spot?'

Arthur, who spent four hours when he moved into this flat carefully arranging speakers so that his favourite seat would indeed be in the sweet spot, grins. 'Mmhmm,' he says lazily. 'Is this an issue?'

'You're going to have to learn to share,' Merlin says, shoving at him. Arthur plants his feet and digs his back into the couch's cushions, refusing to be shoved.

It descends into a wrestling match, which of course Arthur wins, and a spluttering, laughing Merlin decides that the only fair way to settle it is for him to sit on Arthur's lap, which he proceeds to do. He manages to knee Arthur in the ribs in the process, and Arthur smacks at him, and somewhere along the way slapping turns to grabbing turns to kissing, laughing at each other and spluttering, but it slows and it quietens and after a while they're just sharing space and breath. It's easy as a heartbeat, natural.

The CD changes tracks the same way, sleek and smooth. _Time is never time at all, you can never ever leave ..._

Arthur slides his hands under Merlin's shirt, traces the scar on Merlin's ribs with his fingers, careful and slow.

'Does it hurt?' he asks, pushing at it curiously. Merlin bats his hand away.

'Not really,' he says. 'Most of the time it doesn't feel anything at all. Scar tissue, right?'

'Right,' Arthur agrees, and bites a kiss onto Merlin's jaw just to be annoying, to change the subject. 'You want to move this somewhere more comfortable?' he asks, rolling his hips up under Merlin.

Merlin cocks his head to one side though, half-closing his eyes. 'Nah,' he says, drawling it. 'You can't ask me to leave my D'arcy,' he adds, drumming the fingers of one hand on Arthur's shoulder in time with the bassline of the song.

'Am I going to have to leave you and your D'arcy alone?' Arthur asks, fiddling with Merlin's fly. It's not that he badly wants to get down to business, it's just ...

'I don't mind sharing if you don't,' Merlin says wickedly.

'Maybe I do,' Arthur mock-growls into Merlin's throat. 'Maybe the thought of you and D'arcy Wretzky getting your basstacular freak on fills me with Heathcliffian rage.'

'Well we can't have that, can we.' In one movement Merlin is up off Arthur's lap, leaving it feeling very cold and alone, and turning the CD off. Billy Corgan gets cut off halfway through offering up the night, tonight, and Merlin's back. 'Better?' he asks.

'Much,' says Arthur, and kisses him again.

The silence rings like a bell, weird and uncommon. Merlin plucks at Arthur's shirt, lifts himself away a bit. He's got his serious face on.

'I'm leaving Albion,' Arthur cuts in, before Merlin can say anything about maybe this isn't such a good idea.

'You're- what?'

'I ... can't justify my father's tactics to myself any longer,' Arthur says. It's mostly true.

'I didn't mean it to turn out like this,' Merlin says, looking a bit tortured. He starts to slide off Arthur's lap. Arthur clutches his hips and holds him firm. 'I just wanted to - and then you'd've gone, and this whole thing-'

'This whole thing where, hopefully, eventually, I might get to take you to bed, and then wake up with you in the morning?' Arthur asks.

'Well yeah, but-'

'As opposed to the thing where I might have had a fumble in a bathroom toilet and never seen you again?'

'I wasn't-'

'Merlin,' says Arthur firmly. 'I didn't follow Old Religion around for six months because I liked the way Drake winked at me every damn time he saw me.'

'But I've ruined your relationship with your father-'

'I never _had_ a relationship with my father, you idiot.'

'And now you're giving up your _job_-'

Arthur tilts Merlin's head up and stares him in the eye. 'Shut up,' he says.

Merlin does so.

'Right. Let's clear this up right now. You haven't ruined anything, except my ability to listen to the Smashing Pumpkins ever again without some disturbing mental images involving you and Ms Wretzky, which I am endeavouring to suppress as we speak. I would very much like for this thing where you come home with me to be a regular thing. For one, my couch, and definitely my bed, is infinitely more comfortable than a bathroom stall, and for another, if I saw you go home with one of your other shameless groupies then I might actually experience some Heathcliffian rage.'

Merlin blinks at him.

'I _like_ you, you idiot. Shag or no shag. Job or no job. It doesn't matter.' Arthur rolls Merlin off him and onto the couch, and gets up. The LEDs on the amp glitter - Merlin hadn't turned it off, just stopped the disc. Arthur flips _Mellon Collie_ out, and peers at his CD rack for a bit. He hears Merlin rustling behind him on the couch, probably easing himself into the sweet spot, but that's okay. Arthur reckons he can probably afford to relinquish the sweet spot for this, anyway. To make a point. Talking doesn't seem to be working, but this might. The sheer soppiness of the gesture makes him wince, but if anything will make an impression, it's got to be something with a bassline.

Arthur hits 'Play' again. Merlin stares up at him from the couch, from the sweet spot.

_Tender is the night, lying by your side..._

'So don't you dare leave,' Arthur says.

***

If anyone's interested, the songs mentioned by titles and/or lyrics in this fic are, in order:

'Breed' - Nirvana  
'Touch Me I'm Sick' - Mudhoney  
'Dress' - PJ Harvey  
'Baba O Riley' - The Who  
'Another Love Song' - Queens of the Stone Age  
'Infected' - Bad Religion  
'Black' - Pearl Jam  
'Better Off Dead' - Bad Religion  
'Let Me In' - R.E.M.  
'Battery' - Metallica  
'Setting Forth' - Eddie Vedder  
'Mind Eraser (No Chaser)' - Them Crooked Vultures  
'Tonight, Tonight' - The Smashing Pumpkins  
'Tender' - Blur


End file.
